Enlightening class as usual. Really enjoy employing the new angles, definitely not enjoying having them done to me .

Woofs of agreement, even thought I spent a good portion of class today trying to get my dodger mechanics working correctly. Uninstalling less productive habits for more productive habits always takes time and causes significant brain farts.

I too am enjoying this class greatly. Its nice to see people moving forward briskly.

SS: Poi, I forgot to mention today that Kevin sends his apologies for not making it.====================

Today we deepened our understanding of the "half carrot dodger dracula". As we began drilling briskly with gloves, it became apparent that we needed to clean up the precision of our silat elbows, so the middle section of the class when to some KT clinch work and the combination which we use to teach the movements. Having cleaned the movement up, we brought it back to "half carrot dodger-dracula" and all reported feeling pleased at the greater and safer efficiency of the attack developed by the clinch training patterns. As a teacher I felt very , , , crafty.

Last class was very enlightening. It is good to see the material can adapt and evolve with other situation. Also you don't realize how much we have covered until you work with a person that does not know it.

At today's "Kali Tudo" (tm) class Kenny Johnson came to help out. For those of you not familiar with the name, he is a world class MMA-wrestling coach. You saw him as Noguiera's MMA-wrestling coach on Spike's "TUF", and he regular works with people like Anderson Silva, BJ Penn and others of that ilk. After our two hour class, he left to train Anderson.

I know KJ from Rigan Machado's place. I took a wrestling lesson from him several months ago to clean up a wrestling based hold that I learned from Rico Chiaparelli; no problem with how Rico taught it!-- simply I was running into a particular problem that I wanted to solve as well as work on my underhooks, which have always been a bit of a mystery to me.

He was intrigued by the moves I was putting on top of what he was showing me and we began to spar on various occasions. He is a gentleman as we play (good thing or I could get hurt!).

Two people from my Monday KT class have a school of their own about 90 minutes east from here and they have begun bringing me out to their school every few months for a one day seminar. Not only is it nice to see my work with them taking root with their students, working with a group that has the basics in place enables me to go further and deeper into the material.

Great times in class yesterday-- a strong group operating at a good level, enabling me to really go into things. We are getting really pumped up for the camp that Kenny Johnson and I will be teaching in early February.

Yesterday included spending some time solving front leg kicking counters to our portal moves (In DBMA terminology we say "Stepping through a portal to the magical dimension where martial arts and crafts actually work")

A new variation on the Dracula which we call "Dracula prays to the cross" seems to have a lot of promise in dealing with skilled front legs (see e.g. the problems Randy Couture had with Brandon Vera's front leg)

Class today:1) Either I wasn't pronouncing it clearly or the punny name "the Arfful Dodger" was going over most people's heads so I modified the name to "the Arf-Arful Dodger" ("Arf Arf" for short) to make the dogginess of it more apparent2) I showed the guys (good to see Jason's infant daughter is now old enough that he can rejoin us) the stickfighting foundation of the Arf Arfful Dodger, then we turned to its "Kali Tudo"(tm) application. Normally the Arf Arf is easiest to apply by the taller man against the shorter, but today we also went into a drift shot of the Malayu portion of it for the shorter man against the taller man.3) Also covered were: *intro to the Lost Dog Game *flying bong sao *Zirconia with a Dracula burger

I can se Bruce Buffer trying to use your terminology during a fight "OH! a massive arf-arf into a text book dracula burger!" I gues it is time to stop swinging the 10lb aerobic bar like a staff and get the started with the sticks/hands.